Dataminr, a "Twitter analytics company," announced a partnership with Twitter today that will give it access to the full Twitter Firehose in real-time, thereby allowing it greater access to tweets and metadata. The Twitter Firehose is not publicly available, and provides all public tweets to those with access.

Dataminr made news last year when it reportedly was the first to detect the death of Osama bin Laden, Ars Technica reports. Based on its analysis of 19 tweets in a five-minute period, Dataminr sent an alert to its clients about the death at 10:20 p.m. EST on May 1, 2011. The company says that news of bin Laden's death started to move S&P Futures at around 10:39 p.m., and the U.S. dollar index moved at 10:41 p.m. The New York Times and Bloomberg reportedly did not report the death until 10:43 p.m. Dataminr says it has several large investment banks and a hedge fund currently testing its service. Such firms could theoretically use Datminr's early alerts to profitably trade on news before it is widely reported.

Dataminr uses "linguistic analysis, sentiment classification, analysis of Twitter metadata, and monitoring of spikes in volume, merged with unspecified 'third-party and client proprietary data' to identify events and their reliability," according to Ars Techinca. Dataminr says that other recent "pre-news" it was able to issue alerts on include an assassination attempt on high-ranking Arab leaders in Tajikistan, a tsunami warning in Chile, and panic-buying of fuel in the U.K.

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Dataminr, a "Twitter analytics company," announced a partnership with Twitter today that will give it access to the full Twitter Firehose in real-time, thereby allowing it greater access to tweets and metadata. The Twitter Firehose is not publicly available, and provides all public tweets to those with access.

Dataminr made news last year when it reportedly was the first to detect the death of Osama bin Laden, Ars Technica reports. Based on its analysis of 19 tweets in a five-minute period, Dataminr sent an alert to its clients about the death at 10:20 p.m. EST on May 1, 2011. The company says that news of bin Laden's death started to move S&P Futures at around 10:39 p.m., and the U.S. dollar index moved at 10:41 p.m. The New York Times and Bloomberg reportedly did not report the death until 10:43 p.m. Dataminr says it has several large investment banks and a hedge fund currently testing its service. Such firms could theoretically use Datminr's early alerts to profitably trade on news before it is widely reported.

Dataminr uses "linguistic analysis, sentiment classification, analysis of Twitter metadata, and monitoring of spikes in volume, merged with unspecified 'third-party and client proprietary data' to identify events and their reliability," according to Ars Techinca. Dataminr says that other recent "pre-news" it was able to issue alerts on include an assassination attempt on high-ranking Arab leaders in Tajikistan, a tsunami warning in Chile, and panic-buying of fuel in the U.K.